


And Everything Was Fine

by Engineer104



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Closure, Crack in Concept, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pining, Post-Canon, canon character death, ish, only a bit tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 08:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Pidge finds the reality where everything turned out fine; needless to say, she’s pissed.





	And Everything Was Fine

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i didn’t like season eight and absolutely hated what they did to Allura’s and Lance’s characters and good God they didn't _have_ to kill Allura because as many plot conveniences/deus ex machina as this show had, _this_ is the hill it dies on?? yikes
> 
> also this is a gen Pidge/platonic pallura fic first and a plance fic second (also has mild kallura so out-of-focus i didn't want to tag it)

In the aftermath, Pidge realizes a few crucial things:

First, she’s never empathized with an enemy so much as she does with Honerva, for all her mania and all the destruction she reaped. It’s not been so long since her father and brother went missing, since she pushed boundaries in seeking them, though she hopes she never would’ve gone that far.

Second, some of her friends cope worse with the loss of family than she did or _does_.

Last, Allura’s death leaves a hollowness in her chest and by _quiznak_ it’s _unfair_ when she still had so much to live for.

She traces a finger over the bumpy edge of the scrap of meteorite that sits in her pocket between experiments, the pockmarked surface more captivating than it _should_ be. She found it her last time visiting Altea not long after their dinner on the anniversary, finding it clutched between the statue’s stone fingers.

(She refuses to think of a sculpted hunk of rock as _Allura_.)

Between constantly analyzing it in her lab and searching for traces of certain elements, Pidge is loathe to let it out of her sight, reluctant to even _leave_ a spectrometer running without supervision while she hangs on a thread waiting for results.

Logically she knows very little transreality ore can be refined from this tiny sliver that so easily sits in the palm of her small hand, but after the Lions’ departure, a part of her wonders what damage this much can really do…

A knock on the laboratory door jerks Pidge from her thoughts. She turns, and Matt pushes the door open, an eyebrow raised at the sight of her bent over a computer.

“Late night for you, Pidge,” he observes. He crosses his arms and leans against the door frame, a slight frown on his face. “Can’t you leave that test running overnight and check the results in the morning?”

Pidge checks the screen and suppresses a grimace. “It’s almost done,” she lies.

“Really,” Matt says, tone dripping skepticism. “Little enough time that I should wait for you?”

Her shoulders dip as she avoids his gaze. “Probably not,” she says. “I know you need your six-plus hours.”

He laughs, but it stops abruptly when a sigh escapes him. “Pidge, what’re you doing? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you this devoted to a project.”

Pidge stares at the tube where the shard of comet sits while the spectrometer analyzes it, her lip between her teeth until a yawn bursts from her. She rubs her eyes and tells Matt, “I found an interesting rock that I want to understand. It’s just taking longer to scan its makeup.”

“You found a rock? You sound like Hunk talking about Shay now…”

Pidge smiles and says, “But I don’t want to date this one.” But she frowns, her eyes widening, and scribbles a note on a nearby journal lying open. “Unless it’s carbon dating…” she mumbles, too low for Matt to catch (she hopes).

“Well, fine,” Matt says, pointing at her. “Just make sure you get _some_ sleep, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Pidge grumbles. She rolls her eyes and, after Matt offers a soft _good night_ , returns her attention to the screen to eagerly await her results.

But her head grows heavy, eyelids harder to blink with every second that passes; maybe if she rests for a few minutes she’ll wake to find the scan complete…

Sunlight streams in through the tall windows lining one side of the lab when Pidge jerks awake. Her wheeled chair rolls back, her heart skipping a beat in alarm, but she finds her balance. She rubs the sticky sleep from her eyes, disoriented and unsure what woke her.

When she remembers her test, she shoots to her feet with a gasp only for something furry and _huge_ to barrel into her.

Pidge stumbles back a few steps and blinks in surprise at Kosmo standing in her path, the cosmic wolf almost big enough to fill all the floor space between opposite benches and blocking her view of the door. He towers over her in stature but lowers his head to sweep a rough, almost cat-like tongue over her face.

She giggles and reaches up to scratch behind his ear, but it’s still disgusting so she can’t help grimacing. “Did Keith never train you to knock?” she wonders. She heads towards the sink and turns the tap, washing sleep gunk and cosmic saliva off her face before reaching for the toothbrush and toothpaste she stores in the cabinet for mornings like this.

She smiles when Kosmo rests his big head on her shoulder, reaching up to run her fingers through his silky fur after drying her hands. “Where _is_ Keith anyway? You never go far without him.”

Right on cue, someone knocks on the door. Pidge walks over to open it with Kosmo on her heels, grinning at the sight of Keith standing in the hall in his Marmora suit.

“I didn’t realize you were more polite than your wolf,” she says. Keith rolls his eyes but smiles, letting her teasing pass, so she asks, “What brings you to Earth anyway? A Blade mission? You trying to assassinate someone?”

Keith snorts and crosses his arms. “Yes and no; we’re a humanitarian organization now, Pidge.”

“I know,” she scoffs. “It’s still weird though considering you were going on undercover missions only a couple years ago.”

Keith’s expression sours - she expected him to find her comment _funny_ \- but he says, “I just wanted to drop by the Garrison to visit you and Matt while my mom’s at the cemetery.”

“Cemetery?” Pidge raises an eyebrow. “Who would she—oh!” Her face warms with embarrassment that she _forgot_ , but Keith doesn’t comment. She turns back into the lab, wary of Kosmo sniffing around and clumsily navigating his huge body in the small space, and says, “I’m guessing Matt told you that you’d find me here.”

“He did,” Keith admits.

Pidge presses her fingers into her eyes and sighs. “There’s a reason I moved out of my parents’ house…”

Keith laughs before sobering. “I guess once I’m done here I’ll go see Lance too.”

Her spine stiffens, breath catching in her lungs as it does whenever someone mentions _him_. But her face twists into a scowl almost against her will, and she mutters, “See if you can knock some sense into him while you’re at it.”

Keith sighs, more long-suffering leader than ex-rebel without a cause. “What happened now?”

“He—Kosmo, no!” Pidge’s eyes shoot open when the cosmic wolf knocks the glass tube from the spectrometer.

The tube shatters, spraying fragments of glass over the floor and making her flinch back a step, but before she can even think about cleaning up the mess, Kosmo snatches the piece of transreality comet from the center.

“Kosmo, drop it!” Keith commands like the beast filling Pidge’s lab is any old golden retriever or miniature poodle.

But Kosmo refuses to heed him, the piece of ore poking out of his lips like a misshapen iridescent black fang. But he spins, tail swishing behind him, and disappears through a swirling violet vortex that wasn’t there a heartbeat before.

Pidge gives chase, desperate to reclaim the space metal on which her fondest hope - and worst fear - hinges.

(The vortex disappears before Keith can follow.)

* * *

It's a familiar breathtaking yellow sky that greets her when she emerges from the portal. Her feet sink into soft, moss-like grass, trees with spindly roots heavy with leaves and flowers surrounding her, the very air pulsing with a rich energy.

Her chest tightens, a lump lodging itself in her throat. Is she dreaming?

Kosmo stands beside her, the transreality ore still in his jaws. “What did you do?” she asks him.

He ignores her and stalks away.

With nothing else to do - with no other magic portal opening before her - Pidge follows Kosmo through the trees, ducking underneath roots too high for her to clamber over. Several times she resists the urge to rest her palm against a dark trunk, fearing what she'll sense - can she even still _do_ that without her bond to the Green Lion? - if she does.

They emerge from the forest onto a path leading to a city, a tower crowned with a circle rising over every other building and small hovercraft swimming through the air like so many birds, but that's not what captures her attention.

It's not a thriving Olkarion without the Olkari themselves.

Somehow, Pidge forces her feet forwards, forces air into her frozen lungs and her fingers to unfurl.

_How?_ she asks herself - asks the quiznaking _universe_ \- with every step she takes towards the city's boundaries. The sights are exactly as she remembers, of Olkari going about their daily business and gathering in knots in cafe-like shops and studies and libraries to debate science and technology. The odd alien - for Olkarion, at least - joins them, from a Taujeerian wearing a metal denoting them as a rebel war hero (the design slightly different than she remembers) to a couple of Puigian women staring around at the city with wide-eyed wonder.

Her skin crawls as gazes turn on her - or, rather, on Kosmo. Though everyone knows of the former Black Paladin's cosmic wolf, his stature makes him imposing, his uniqueness worthy of curious stares. But only two figures leave a group of Olkari, making their way towards her and Kosmo.

The traitorous wolf opens another portal and ditches her, the vortex dissolving before she can follow.

Pidge scowls at that spot. "You're _leaving_ me?" she demands of the air.

But the two people whose attention she caught are focusing on her rather than on Kosmo. One is an Altean woman with red hair - scarlet rather than orange like Coran's - tied in a braid draped over her shoulder, but the other is a young Olkari girl.

It's the same girl she watched evacuate in the face of her planet's destruction.

"Oh, Paladin Pidge!" she says, smiling and waving in greeting. She nearly trips over herself in her eagerness, bringing an unwitting smile to her own lips, but the Altean woman holds her upright with a bracing hand around her arm. "You cut your hair short again!"

Pidge's heart skips a beat at the comment; she self-consciously runs her fingers through her hair, even shorter now than when she first infiltrated the Garrison as a male cadet. She hasn't grown it past her shoulders since before that...

"O-oh," she says awkwardly. She shifts her feet, fingers wringing the hem of her jacket and suddenly as unsure of herself as a girl facing the collective stares of her judgmental classmates. "I'm...thanks?"

The girl stares at her in confusion, and the Altean woman wonders, "You're here earlier than we expected, Paladin Pidge. The celebration is not for another few sunrises."

"Celebration?" Pidge's eyes narrow as she wipes her sweaty palms on the seat of her pants. "For what?"

"It's the Coalition's celebration of Queen Allura's coronation," the Altean says, grinning. "Did you forget something you helped plan?"

Pidge's eyes widen, her breath catching in her throat. " _Queen_ —"

A sharp bark cuts her off, and she spins on her heel to see Kosmo standing on the street with—

"Ryner?"

The evidence before her is undeniable.

The wave of grief she's held back for so long knocks her off her feet. Pidge falls to her knees and bursts into suffocating sobs.

* * *

Pidge blames Kosmo for his portal almost as much as she blames herself for holding onto the stupid shard of transreality comet. Why did she think she could do something with it? It's too dangerous to keep with her growing collection of useful space rocks as this little excursion already proved!

She regrets what she hoped from it, the pain in her chest far from worth the effort.

It took vargas for her to calm down, for the flow of tears to cease for longer than a dobosh or two. The revelation that Allura lives in _this_ reality caught her off-guard, but the sight of Ryner - her mentor, someone she admires as much as her own father and Shiro - alive on a thriving Olkarion undid her.

She found exactly what she wanted, yet it shattered her heart.

She sits on a cushioned sofa in an apartment in Coalition headquarters between Ryner and the red-haired Altean - who introduced herself as Representative Merla between bouts of sobs - clutching a ceramic mug of tea.

"You - or your counterpart, I suppose - store this mix from Earth here," Ryner explained when she pushed the steaming mug into her hands. She set a lidded sugar bowl and a teaspoon on a small end table in front of the couch and added, "Unfortunately, I cannot recall how much sucrose you take with it."

Pidge, not one for bitter beverages, unwound her body enough to mix two spoonfuls of sugar into the tea. "Thank you," she said before taking a tentative sip.

She recognized the mix of black tea and spices immediately as her favorite, the perfect drink she made for herself in anticipation of a long experiment by night. The warmth seeped through her body, helping relax her muscles and nerves while relieved that Ryner _knew_ she's not of this reality without her having to explain.

But Merla's eyes are still wide. "You mean the Galra destroyed Olkarion in _your_ reality, Paladin Pidge?"

Pidge stares into her tea - the steam would be fogging up her lenses if she still wore glasses - and shakes her head. "It was one of Honerva's robeasts," she says. She pinches her lip between her teeth and admits, "An Altean piloted it."

Merla's jaw drops, hand flying to her mouth in shock. "But we would've _never_ —"

"My reality is obviously different from yours," Pidge cuts her off. She wipes away a single stubborn tear with the heel of her hand and adds, "I'm curious to know where our realities diverged, but I'm not sure there's a point. It's too late for us anyway."

"Pidge," Ryner says carefully, her hand hovering over her shoulder, "how did you get here?”

But Pidge ignores that question, instead taking in her surroundings. It's a small living room in a simple apartment, one designed to resemble something from Earth. Throw pillows on the sofa and one left on the floor, a monitor mounted against one wall with a retro game console - something even _older_ than the Game Flux - plugged into it, shelves littered with souvenirs from different planets and books written in English, Spanish (oddly enough), and a handful of alien scripts, including a tiny Olkari echo cube. A breakfast bar separates the living room from a small kitchen, a short hallway lined with framed photos that she doesn’t dare examine too closely leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms.

All in all, it strikes Pidge as loved and lived in but not quite a _home_.

Her stomach churns with anxiety as she wonders, "I-is this my...counterpart's apartment?"

"Yes," Ryner says. "I was not sure where else to bring you but I thought you might be calmer somewhere a little more familiar."

"Is sh-she here?"

"She will be in a few quintants to join the celebration," Merla replies. "If you're here that long, we'll find you other arrangements if need be."

"I am certain the Paladin Pidge of this reality will not mind," Ryner tells her with a smile that soothes some of the anxiety in Pidge's gut.

Pidge returns a tremulous smile of her own, giggling when a hiccup escapes her. "S-since I learned alternate realities were definitely a thing I could find, I've always wanted to meet another version of me; it makes sense that the _other_ me would think the same..."

But if Olkarion still orbits its sun, if Allura still lives and was crowned _queen_ of Altea, how is her doppelganger's life different in this reality?

It's only one more thing she's not sure she wants to find out.

* * *

Pidge lasts less than a night in her counterpart’s apartment. Sleeping in her bed is useless - she only tosses and turns, wondering how she’ll get home and fretting about what she’ll learn while she’s stuck because Kosmo _left_ her - and she won’t be able to avoid picking through her belongings for long, not with a mermaid plushy propped against a pillow and a pair of Blue Lion slippers - is she the _Blue_ Paladin in this reality? - mocking her from their place poking out from under the bed.

For the first time _ever_ , Pidge doesn’t want to know.

Ryner happily agrees with her request and has her moved to an unoccupied apartment, one almost sterile and uncomfortable and _plain_.

But exhausted and emotionally wrung out, Pidge falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

A roar wakes her in the morning, powerful enough to shake the building’s foundation and for the glass in the bedroom window to tremble. It makes goosebumps rise on her arms and a shiver travel up her spine, and she _knows_ what she’ll see before she peeks through the curtains.

In the sprawling courtyard at Coalition headquarters perches the Black Lion, its wings proudly raised while its ramp drops and three figures file out.

Coran’s hair stands out like the flame of a candle, his coat remarkably like the one _her_ reality’s Coran recently took to wearing, with two in armor trailing behind him. He stands at the end of the ramp and turns ninety degrees, raising what looks like a trombone but with far more twisting in the tubes to his lips.

The shriek penetrates the walls and makes Pidge cringe, her hands rising automatically to cover her ears. The slightly taller of the two figures - wearing red armor - flinches backwards, reacting just as she did, while the other in pink pauses beside Coran with their hands folded neatly behind their back.

Pidge’s heart stutters in her chest when they remove their helmet and reveal a high, neat bun of white hair and a glittering blue crystal.

It’s all she needs to move, to sprint from this bedroom and from the apartment that isn’t hers and down the hall and down the stairs (lacking the patience for an elevator) and out the entrance and onto the courtyard, heedless of the effort it takes to draw breath and the stitch in her side.

“Allura!” she calls, and when she glances up in surprise, a smile gracing her face as soon as her eyes land on her, Pidge jumps.

She throws her arms around Allura’s neck, making her stumble backwards a step (likely more out of shock than from Pidge’s strength) while she returns her hug, and sniffs as a lump lodges in her throat. “I-I’m _so_ sorry,” she chokes past a rising sob. “W-we should’ve—should’ve tried harder to stop you; oh, q-quiznak, Coran m-misses you _s-so_ —so much and the _m-mice_ and so do—so do _w-we_ and I’m s-sorry I-I t-told you o-off at th-that—that p-party on Arus, I-I’m s-sorry I a-almost left, I—” She cuts herself off, struggling to breathe and well-aware that she’s blubbering about things that haven’t mattered for years and that a disgusting mixture of snot and tears run down her face.

Allura pats her back. “Pidge,” she says hesitantly, “what the quiznak are you talking about?”

Pidge’s eyes widen, and through her tears she takes in the sight of a shocked Keith - with a ponytail? - and a stunned Coran still with that bizarre musical instrument raised halfway to his face.

And she remembers where she is.

Pidge lets go of Allura and steps away, heat rising to her face as she wipes her eyes with the sleeves of her borrowed and ill-fitting pajamas. A few hiccups escape her before she properly catches her breath, and she’s halfway to composing herself when she thinks to say, “C-congratulations on the coronation, Allura.”

“Thank you, Pidge,” Allura says, looking no less confused than she did when she let her go, “but why—”

Another roar interrupts her, her heart skipping an uncomfortable beat when the Red Lion descends from the sky and touches down beside the Black Lion.

“Q-quiznak,” Pidge mumbles, because if Allura’s alive and well, then she’ll have to see—

Lance meanders down the ramp whistling a merry tune that Pidge recognizes as one her reality’s Lance used to hum. The sound of it makes her chest ache, as does the sight of a cheerful Lance with a blue helmet tucked under his arm and a finger gun directed at Keith in greeting.

“Fancy seeing you here, fearless leader,” he says, grinning.

Keith crosses his arms. “You’re here earlier than you said you’d be,” he accuses.

“If I told you I’d be here earlier, it might’ve ruined my surprise for…” he trails off, his gaze - his widening eyes - drifting towards her and Allura. “Oh, quiznak.”

Pidge stiffens as he approaches them, the echo of their - well, of her and his counterpart’s - last quarrel reverberating through her head. She almost wants to flee, but her feet freeze to the ground.

Besides, she can’t fight her morbid curiosity, not when it’s been so long since she’s seen Lance _beam_ the way he does when his eyes land on her.

Or, no, she has to be imagining that; surely that happy, intent gaze is meant for Allura rather than for her.

“Pidge!” Lance exclaims, erasing all doubt she holds onto. It knocks the breath from her, her face hot for a different reason she _thought_ she left behind her. “You’re here…early. And you cut your hair short again!” His smile frays a little until he stands before her and his fingers close around hers.

She can’t look away from his blue eyes, captivated by this bizarre fantasy she’s living, not even when his face falls and he wonders, “Pidge, are you okay?” He lowers his voice, leaning in to whisper directly into her ear so it takes all her strength not to shiver, and says, “What happened, Katie? You look like—”

“I’m fine,” she forces out. She resists the urge not to snatch her hand back - oh, but _shouldn_ _’t_ she before he figures out that she’s not her counterpart?

“Sure…” he mutters, his eyes narrowing. His hand - the one not holding hers - cups the back of her head while he leans down to press his lips to her forehead. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it now.”

Pidge’s heart races as she finally chokes out, “I-I’m not your Pidge!”

Lance pulls away from her just enough to meet her eyes. “W-what do you mean?” he wonders, his eyebrows drawing together in that too-familiar worry she hates so much. But his hands fall away from her head and fingers, and she can breathe for the first time since he touched her so tenderly. “Pidge—”

“I-I’m from a different reality,” she says, letting her eyes drift away from Lance to look at Allura, Coran, and Keith in turn. She shifts her feet, clasping her sweaty hands together and sighing. “And I…wish I lived in this one.”

* * *

“So Allura’s dead in your reality?” Keith stares Pidge down while he hovers protectively over Allura as if concerned she’ll also drop dead any tick.

She squirms in her chair and nods. “She sacrificed her life to save our reality,” she explains. “And to save yours too.”

“Then we owe your Allura much,” this Allura says. She sighs and rubs the corners of her eyes, but a smile stretches over her face when Keith rests a hand on her shoulder. “I’m all right,” she reassures him.

Keith frowns, skeptical, but he falls into the chair beside her.

Pidge glances between them with wide eyes, wondering if she imagines the casual intimacy between them. It’s so much like her parents’ that—

“Wait, my family!” She shoots to her feet - she doesn’t miss Keith’s hand sticking out to summon a bayard - and demands, “Are they alive in this reality?”

“They are,” Allura informs her. “We anticipate their arrival for the celebration in a few quintants, along with…well, you.”

Pidge bites her lip and stares at the table between them. “Why didn’t my counterpart come with your Lance? They seem…close.”

An understatement, she thinks, with the ghost of his touch on her hands and a memory of his conflicted expression when she blurted her origin frozen in her mind.

He keeps his distance now, busy with Coran after Ryner guided her away from the courtyard, for which Pidge is both relieved and…disappointed.

“And you and your reality’s Lance are not?” Allura wonders with a raised eyebrow.

“Not like we were when we still had Voltron,” Pidge confesses with an ache in her chest, “and never like _that_.”

She’s spared the need to elaborate when Keith blurts, “Wait, what do you mean by when you _still_ had Voltron?”

“Uh…we don’t have Voltron anymore in my reality,” she admits. She plasters on an undoubtedly awkward smile and says, “The Lions launched themselves into space about a year after Allura died, and”—her eyes slip shut—”we haven’t seen them since.”

Her mind has been positively _quiet_ since the Green Lion left her and _withdrew_ , their bond stretching thin with distance and less elastic than she hoped. The absence where Green’s unique, warm, wordless voice resided leaves her something close to numb.

And to think she once almost gave that up willingly.

“Then without Voltron, how did you get here?” Allura asks.

Pidge picks at her lasagna (of _course_ that’s a breakfast food in a different reality) and explains, “I’m not positive, but I do have a…hypothesis that it has something to do with a piece of transreality comet I found and kept for experiments.”

“That can’t possibly be all,” Allura says. “The transreality comet is useless unless it’s refined and shaped.”

“Oh really?” Pidge grumbles, rolling her eyes. She points at Keith with her spork and says, “Why don’t you ask his wolf if you’re so sure?”

Keith blinks. “My…wolf?” He exchanges a startled glance with Allura. “I don’t have a wolf.”

“Oh, well, I guess that means if Kosmo is wandering around Olkarion, no one will recognize him.” Pidge crosses her arms and glares at her barely touched plate, muscles tensing with a fresh wave of irritation.

Her head hurts, a knot of dread sits heavily in her stomach, and she hasn’t been able to breathe easily since she recognized where she stands.

She just wants to go home, before she learns something else that her counterpart has _better_.

* * *

Pidge finds differences in Olkarion’s night sky. One less planet in the solar system, stars identically named but belonging in other sectors, a vivid green and blueish nebula where she doesn’t remember one…

They’re not the sort of differences she ever thought to consider when musing on alternate realities. It’s one thing to think of the minutiae, of a reality that splinters just because her father wore green socks on a particular day, than of the _huge_ divergences, of stars that formed sooner or hotter or denser or with or without planets orbiting them or—

Or maybe the differences are in what the Galra and Honerva chose to destroy.

But this isn’t _her_ night sky, the blanket of stars of her universe. It’s not the sky her father pointed to while taking her stargazing way past her bedtime, when he ruffled her hair and said, _“See those stars, Katie? Their light travels billions of miles for thousands of years just to light the sky for you.”_

For all her knowledge and skills and experience, Pidge isn’t arrogant enough to think she can comprehend the size of her universe, much less the universes in an unlimited array of realities each with a special patchwork of its own.

How different is the rest of her counterpart’s team? Does the Atlas even _exist_ here? And if Merla’s affront that the Alteans would ever destroy a planet means what she suspects it does, when did Voltron defeat Honerva?

All these questions and more are ones she’s not sure she wants answered.

A soft whine interrupts the silence of the night, and something hard prods Pidge’s hand. Her fingers curl automatically around a rock - the shard of transreality ore - while she wipes her face free of tears. She turns a tremulous smile towards her companion and wonders, “What was the point, Kosmo? Why did I think this was a good idea?” She sighs and gestures around Olkarion’s capital, the city darker than any city on Earth would ever be by night and just out of respect for the stars. “I haven’t learned anything _helpful_!”

No, all she found was Allura alive, a thriving Olkarion, a reality where her counterpart still shares a bond with the Green Lion, and a happy Lance that’s not withdrawn.

She feels along the bumpy surface of the scrap of comet, scowling at it like she can blame it for everything wrong in _her_ reality; sure, the Galra live in relative stability and the Alteans steadily recover from the damage inflicted on them by Lotor and Honerva, but how is it _fair_ that Allura can’t witness the fruit of her labors?

“Guess I learned you can’t have it all,” Pidge mutters. The stars above blur as she blinks fresh tears from her eyes, a shaky breath escaping her.

“Pidge?”

Her eyes shoot open in surprise as soft footsteps approach her spot on the roof. “Y-yeah?”

“Mind if I join you?” Allura wonders.

Pidge bites her lip, of half a mind to refuse, to say that Kosmo’s enough company for her, except…now that she looks she notices he disappeared without her noticing, _again_. So she says, “Sure.”

Allura sits beside her, smoothing her robe underneath her and perching primly with her feet to one side. Pidge, by contrast, wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees while she struggles to compose herself.

This may be Allura, but they’re still strangers of a sort, and she’s already broken down in front of her once.

They sit in silence for longer than Pidge bothers to keep track of, long enough that her eyelids start drooping with exhaustion from an emotionally trying few quintants, but eventually Allura says, “I don’t know for what purpose you’re here—”

“Me neither,” Pidge mumbles into the fabric of her pants.

“—but maybe it’s to learn for what your reality’s Allura sacrificed herself to preserve?”

Pidge snorts. “So your reality can rub it in my reality’s nose?”

“I don’t—is that an Earth figure of speech?”

“I guess,” she replies. “And none of us—I mean, your teammates haven’t used it around you?”

“I don’t believe so,” Allura says. “Unless it’s unique to your reality’s Earth?”

A grudging smile pushes at her lips. “Maybe.” But the heaviness of her heart forces her smile away. She wrings the hem of her borrowed shirt - of an Altean design - in an attempt to distract herself from the lump caught in her throat.

“It wasn’t fair,” Pidge mutters, glaring down at the dark city. “Y-you shouldn’t have had to die when you had so much to live for.” She presses her fingers into her eyes and shudders as more tears trickle out, well-aware she sounds more like the child forced to fight in an intergalactic war than the young woman that’s withstood loss and pulled through stronger.

_Nothing like Allura did,_ Pidge reminds herself. Olkarion was destroyed, but her home - her _family_ \- stayed intact.

Some of the grief gives way to a heart-pounding anger, and she turns to face Allura and demand, “Why would you bring back Altea if you were just going to abandon your people after everything Lotor and Honerva did to them?”

Her eyes shoot wide open, jaw dropping and hand rising to her mouth. “I—your Allura did _what_?”

“Brought back Altea and Daibazaal,” Pidge says.

Allura doesn’t speak for a long dobosh, and when she does her voice cracks with repressed emotion, “That’s…one way to rebuild a home.”

“You never even got to enjoy it,” Pidge retorts, rolling her eyes, but her anger fades, replaced with the shame filling her gut that she mentioned it to Allura at all. “They needed you there like they need you here.”

“Your reality’s Altean colonists?”

“And the Coalition and our teammates and especially…Lance,” she adds, hesitant. She can’t help shooting a sideways glance at Allura, wondering if it’ll strike a chord with her.

(And if it does, why would it _matter_?)

Allura frowns and echoes, “Lance? I can’t imagine anything, not even a friend’s death, keeping him down for very long.”

“He…took your death the hardest after Coran,” Pidge explains haltingly. Her arms tighten around her legs, eyes pinching shut. “I-it’s been over two years, and he’s still not himself again.”

_“Why would you do this to yourself, Lance? Living with all these reminders isn’t going to—”_

_“You wouldn’t understand, Pidge.”_

_“Oh, yeah? Well, we_ all _lost her, but none of us are still moping around on our days off!_ _”_

_“I’m not—”_

_“I miss you, okay? I miss your stupid jokes and your teasing and your boasts and when you wanted to do something else with your life besides daydream about a relationship you were in for less than three months as a teenager!”_

_“I loved her!”_

_“And if she loved you, she wouldn’t want you to be stuck in the past so find something else to live for!”_

Allura sighs, eyes downcast with the pink markings on her cheeks glowing in the dark. “I’m sorry that happened in your reality, Pidge. I wish I could do something for you.” She rests a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

It feels almost like she’s squeezing Pidge’s heart instead.

Allura continues, “I suppose that, because there’s nothing either of us can do short of turning back time, all that’s left for you to do is to honor her sacrifice and live your best.”

A flash of light catches Pidge’s eye. A shooting star blazes a path across the night sky before fading, but when she blinks, the afterimage lingers inside her eyelids.

Pidge bites her lip and, despite the tightness in her chest, says, “That’s what we’ve all tried to do…” The shard of transreality comet in her hand grows heavier as she sniffs and wipes away her fresh tears with her sleeve.

* * *

Pidge cursed the day she decided to move out of her parents' house and into her own - and far more private - Garrison apartment as she struggles up the stairs while lugging three bags of groceries at once. She _could've_ brought Chip home with her or "borrowed" a hover platform from the hangars or even made more than one trip back to her motorbike, but no, she has to be lazy and bring it all up at once.

Her arms ache and she's winded - she _really_ needs to get back into shape - by the time she drops her groceries onto the kitchen counter to the chorus of her cell phone vibrating.

She fishes in her jacket pocket, confused when her hand comes up empty only to remember her phone's in her purse. Without checking the screen, she answers, "Hello?"

"Pidge?" says the last person she expected to hear from. Her heart skips a beat in shock, her free hand - halfway to a bag to pull out a jar of generic peanut butter - freezing when Lance continues, "I heard about your little adventure from Keith..."

Her hand drops to her side as Pidge exhales in a huff, at the memory of emerging from a violet portal with Kosmo, of tackling him into a hug and holding herself back from explaining more than the bare minimum of where she was.

There's no reason for Keith to grieve what could've been, and the simple mention of Allura alive and happy in another reality had him gripping Pidge just as tightly as she held onto him.

The mixture of grief and longing for something like _that_ will always live within her, but now...

Well, at least they had a good laugh about the idea of Keith styling his hair with a ponytail.

"What about it?" Pidge wonders warily. Her shoulders tense, in anticipation of...something. She has no desire to rehash their last encounter at his family's farm.

"You were really in another reality, huh?"

Pidge bites her lip. "Yeah?"

"And...we were okay in it?"

"Who's _we_?" she asks, her eyes narrowing at her kitchen counter. "Voltron was, but Zarkon was probably—"

"No, I mean...you and me."

Pidge sucks in a breath, remembering the other reality's Lance smiling so brightly when he simply laid eyes on her. In _this_ reality, does that Lance live only in the past, or will they - will _she_ \- see him again in the future?

"I...yeah, we were," she replies carefully, hoping her tone gives no more information away than it needs to. "Why?"

(Maybe she’ll tell him _how_ okay one day.)

She half-expects him to brush her question off, perhaps to ask about Allura or about him _and_ Allura, but instead he admits, "I want us to be okay here too."

Pidge sighs, wearier than grocery shopping should make her, and says, "What're you going to do about that, Lance?"

"I'm sorry, Pidge."

Her eyes widen in shock. "What?"

"I shouldn't have...dismissed you like that," Lance admits with a sigh of his own. "You're my friend - practically family - and I know you care about me."

She raises an eyebrow, though he's not there to see it. "So who told you to say that? Keith when he told you about my _adventure_?"

"What? No!" Lance squawks, his snappy indignation so familiar it brings a smile to her face. "I mean, he might've had something to do with it..."

"Knew it," Pidge says, smug. "Leadership changes a man."

"But more than that, Pidge," Lance continues as if he hadn't heard her, "you were right. I haven't been living for myself, but I want to start."

"Oh." Her smile widens, and a welcome relief washes over her. They can put their fight behind them, and both of them can _heal_. "How are you planning to do that?"

"Well, remember that position at the Garrison you told me about?" Lance wonders with a brightness more _genuine_ and warmer than anything he's mustered in a while. "Is it still open?”

But now everything will be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! now we get back to our regularly scheduled Let's Ignore Canon and Retreat into the Ghosts of Seasons Past and AUs Where Things Make Sense!! come yell at me [on tumblr](https://sp4c3-0ddity.tumblr.com/) for as long as we both shall live


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